Nan Sherwood at Pine Camp Part 30

"Gracious me, Nan! But you are a plucky girl. Wait till Rafe hears about it. And marm and dad will praise you for being so level-headed today.

Aren't many girls like you, Nan, I bet!"

"Nor boys like you, Tom," returned the girl, shyly. "How brave you were, staying to pull that old wagon-wheel out of the fire."

"Ugh!" growled Tom. "A fat time I'd have had there if it hadn't been for you helping me out of the oven. Cracky! I thought I was going to have my leg burned to a cinder.

"That would have been terrible!" shuddered Nan. "What would poor Aunt Kate have said?"

"We can't tell her anything about it," Tom hastened to say. "You see, my two older brothers, Jimmy and Alfred, were asleep in the garret of our house at Pale Lick, and marm thought they'd got out. It wasn't until afterward that she learned they'd been burned up with the house. She's never got over it."

"I shouldn't think she would," sighed Nan.

"And you see she's awfully afraid of fire, even now," said Tom.

They rattled on over the logs of the road; here and there they came to bad places, where the water had not gone down; and the horses were very careful in putting their hoofs down upon the shaking logs. However, it was not much over an hour after leaving the island that they spied the lights of Pine Camp from the top of the easy rise leading out of the tamarack swamp.

They met Rafe with a lantern half way down the hill. Uncle Henry was away and Aunt Kate had sent Rafe out to look for Nan, although she supposed that the girl had remained at the Vanderwillers' until the rain was over, and that Toby would bring her home.

There was but one other incident of note before the three of them reached the rambling house Uncle Henry had built on the outskirts of Pine Camp. As they turned off the swamp road through the lane that ran past the Llewellen cottage, Rafe suddenly threw the ray of his lantern into a hollow tree beside the roadway. A small figure was there, and it darted back out of sight.

"There!" shouted Rafe. "I knew you were there, you little nuisance. What did you run out of the house and follow me for, Mar'gret Llewellen?"

He jumped in and seized the child, dragging her forth from the hollow of the big tree. He held her, while she squirmed and screamed.

"You lemme alone, Rafe Sherwood! Lemme alone!" she commanded. "I ain't doin' nothin' to you."

"Well, I bet you are up to some monkey-s.h.i.+nes, out this time of night,"

said Rafe, giving her a little shake. "You come on back home, Mag."

"I won't!" declared the girl.

"Yes, do, Margaret," begged Nan. "It's going to rain harder. Don't hurt her, Rafe."

"Yah! You couldn't hurt her," said Rafe. "She's as tough as a little pine-knot, and don't you forget it! Aren't you, Mag?"

"Lemme go!" repeated Margaret, angrily.

"What did you chase down here after me for?" asked Rafe, the curious.

"I, I thought mebbe you was comin' to hunt for something," stammered the girl.

"So I was. For Nancy here," laughed Rafe.

"Thought 'twas somethin' of mine," said the girl. "Lemme go now!"

She jerked away her hand and scuttled into the house that they were then just pa.s.sing.

"Wonder what the little imp came out to watch me for?" queried Rafe.

After they had arrived at home and the excitement o the return was over; after she and Tom had told as much of their adventures as they thought wise, and Nan had retired to the east chamber, she thought again about Margaret and her queer actions by the roadside.

"Why, that tree is where Margaret hides her most precious possessions,"

said Nan, suddenly, sitting up in bed. "Why, what could it be she was afraid Rafe would find there? Why can that child have hidden something there that she doesn't want any of us to see?"

Late as it was, and dark as it was, and stormy as the night was, she felt that she must know immediately what Margaret Llewellen had hidden in the hollow tree.

Chapter XXIX. GREAT NEWS FROM SCOTLAND

Nan put two and two together, and the answer came right.

She got out of bed, lit her lamp again and began to dress. She turned her light down to a dim glimmer, however, for she did not want her aunt to look out of the window of her bedroom on the other side of the parlor and catch a glimpse of her light.

In the half darkness Nan made a quick toilet; and then, with her raincoat on and hood over her head, she hesitated with her hand upon the k.n.o.b of the door.

"If I go through the parlor and out the side door, Aunt Kate will hear me," thought Nan. "That won't do at all."

She looked at the further window. Outside the rain was pattering and there was absolutely no light. In the pocket of her raincoat Nan had slipped the electric torch she had brought from home, something of which Aunt Kate cordially approved, and was always begging Uncle Henry to buy one like it.

The pocket lamp showed her the fastenings of the screen. Tom had made it to slide up out of the way when she wanted to open or close the sash.

And, as far as she could see, any one could open it from the outside as easily as from the room itself.

"And that's just what she did," decided Nan. "How foolish of me not to think of it before."

With this enigmatical observation Nan prepared to leave the room by this very means. She was agile, and the sill of the window was only three feet from the ground. It was through this opening that she had helped Margaret Llewellen into her room on the first occasion that odd child had visited her.

Nan jumped out, let the screen down softly, and hurried across the unfenced yard to the road. She knew well enough when she reached the public track, despite the darkness for the mirey clay stuck to her shoes and made the walking difficult.

She flashed her lamp once, to get her bearings, and then set off down the lane toward the swamp road. There was not a light in any house she pa.s.sed, not even in Mr. Fen Llewellen's cottage. "I guess Margaret's fast asleep," murmured Nan, as she pa.s.sed swiftly on.

The rain beat down upon the girl steadily, and Nan found it s.h.i.+very out here in the dark and storm. However, her reason for coming, Nan conceived, was a very serious one. This was no foolish escapade.

By showing her light now and then she managed to follow the dark lane without stepping off into any of the deep puddles which lay beside the path. She came, finally, to the spot where Rafe had met her and Tom with his lantern that evening. Here stood the great tree with a big hollow in it, Margaret Llewellen's favorite playhouse.

For a moment Nan hesitated. The place looked so dark and there might be something alive in the hollow.

But she plucked up courage and flashed her lamp into it. The white ray played about the floor of the hollow. The other Llewellen children dared not come here, for Margaret punished them if they disturbed anything belonging to her.

What Nan was looking for was not in sight. She stepped inside, and raised the torch. The rotting wood had been neatly scooped out, and where the aperture grew smaller at the top a wide shelf had been made by the ingenious Margaret. Nan had never been in this hide-out before.

"It must be here! It must be here!" she kept telling herself, and stood on her tiptoes to feel along the shelf, which was above her head.

Nan discovered nothing at first. She felt along the entire length of the shelf again. Nothing!

"I know better!" she almost sobbed. "My dear, beautiful."

She jumped up, feeling back on the shelf with her right hand. Her fingers touched something, and it was not the rotting wood of the tree!